Lives leap forward with every ding of a bell in Dan LeFranc's "The Big Meal" at San Jose Repertory Theatre. You've heard that bell signaling waiters that a dish is ready to serve. And that fits, because every scene in LeFranc's fast-forward chronicle of 60-some years of an American family takes place in a restaurant.

It's a cute device, well played in Kirsten Brandt's production that opened Wednesday. And it's just part of the structural playfulness. No sooner have you adjusted to the quick time shifts - one minute, waitress Nicole (Jessica Lynn Carroll) is ignoring the come-ons of goofy customer Sam (Aaron Wilton); the next, they're setting limits on a one-night-fling date; then they're in a relationship; and it's over - than LeFranc starts switching the actors who play the parts as they age.

But this setup is so familiar, it's almost a genre. Ever since Thornton Wilder covered 90 years of a family in "The Long Christmas Dinner" (1931), it seems every theatrical generation has to give it a go (as in A.R. Gurney's "The Dining Table" of 1982).

LeFranc, whose teen-adventure fantasy "Troublemaker" premiered last year at Berkeley Rep, updates the language, sex, gender roles and teen attitudes. He does so with some sharp humor and a nice eye for how we wound those closest to us, as well as some clever twists, such as a symbolic last meal each time a character dies.

Brandt and her cast bring out the best the script has to offer on Nina Ball's sleek, upscale diner set. The scene in which a somewhat older and wiser Sam finally proposes to Nicole - now played by Mark Anderson Phillips and Carrie Paff - is captivatingly funny, edgy and touching all at once.

Paff and Phillips ably portray the central couple's aging until Catherine MacNeal and Richard Farrell take over in old age, and Paff and Phillips become their grown children Maddie and Robbie. Wilton and Carroll are fine in the teen/young adult roles, and a pert, perky Sophia Grace Cuthbert and Nicolas Garcia are three generations of moppets.

But as time rushes forward, it also stands still. Except for a comic recap of dance styles, LeFranc's "Meal" takes place outside of any context beyond a vague, persistent now. The same lack of specificity infects the characters. As the story progresses, they seem more like convenient constructs than people who've earned our sympathy.